


And I never saw you coming (And I'll never be the same)

by Clones_and_gallifrey



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 18:59:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3219866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clones_and_gallifrey/pseuds/Clones_and_gallifrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Who chooses words like romantic stylez in a speech like that? Yet she can’t imagine any other words tasting the same on her lips as she growls them at the mirror." <br/>----------<br/>Or,<br/>Five times Amy is confused about her feelings for Jake, and one time she doesn't have to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I never saw you coming (And I'll never be the same)

i.

It was going fine. Amy’s relationship with Teddy was good. He was nice, and respectable, and he told her she looked beautiful when she had just woken up. He could hold lengthy conversations about important police matters, and he knew which spoon was used for soup, and which for dessert.

Amy likes him, and she thinks that one day she might even be able to love him. She can move in with him and they will decorate their house in her favourite colours, because they are his favourite too. Maybe they will get married and she will make captain and her life will be good.

But fate has other plans, and she’s cursing the universe as she lights up her fourth cigarette of the hour and paces the bathroom of her apartment. Jake is gone, for six months or God knows how long, and his ridiculous love confession (or whatever the hell it was), is ringing in her ears and squeezing her heart. Who does that? Who chooses words like _romantic stylez_ in a speech like that? Yet she can’t imagine any other words tasting the same on her lips as she growls them at the mirror. She lists the words she could have used to reply, but none of them fit. None of them match up to the emotions in her head. Maybe the English language hasn’t divulged a word for these feelings yet. Maybe Gina was right all along, and emoji is the way to go.

“Amy? Are you ok in there?” It’s Teddy. Of course it is. Perfect Teddy, who arrived thirty minutes ago with a bottle of expensive wine (not wine _drink_ , of course not) for her and a selection of pilsners for him. She’s sick of the sight of pilsners already. Bring on the wine drink over pilsners any day.

“Yeah. I’m just… looking for an earring. I dropped it.” She stubs out the cigarette on the window frame and throws it outside, surprised at how well she has handled this particular brand of panic. Smoking is a horrible habit, and everyone knows that, but she just can’t stop tonight. It’s the only way she can go back out there and smile, sit back down next to Teddy and pretend like everything is just _great._

Amy might not have the words for her feelings towards Jake right now, but as she rinses the smoky smell out of her hands, she knows without a shadow of a doubt that if Jake Peralta walked into her bathroom right now, the words she would select are _how dare you._ She’s angry and confused and stuck, and before tonight, the twinges of attraction were easy to ignore, to quash. And she spends the rest of the evening cataloguing her relationship with Jake.

The first time she met him, back when she was sure he was going to be a terrible partner, and the surprise at finding out he was actually a _really good_ detective. The long stakeouts which on paper, should have been boring as hell, but which left her smiling like an idiot. The bet- her solid entry on the good date list. She’d never tell anyone, but if she kept a list, that date fell on the ‘good’ side too. And it topped the slightly awkward first dinner date with Teddy. Amy catalogues the way he looked at her across the precinct, the way his hands felt in hers as they danced in that stupid ballroom competition. Jake’s admission checks out, and Amy doesn’t know what the hell to do about it.

So she does what she knows best; plasters a smile on her face, pours herself another glass of wine, and tries her damned hardest to love Teddy Wells.

ii.

He comes back. He was always going to come back; he’s _Jake._ That doesn’t stop Amy from freaking out every time she is called into Captain Holt’s office unexpectedly. She stops being angry at Jake when it sinks in that there’s a chance he might not come back, at least not all in one piece. She throws herself into her relationship instead. She thinks that she could win girlfriend of the year award with the effort she is putting into it, but she’s really just trying to make it work for herself. Because Teddy should be perfect for her, and she should be happy with him without having to try. She wants her relationship to be built on honesty, so at some point in those months she tells him what Jake said to her. She doesn’t tell him how it makes her feel. She doesn’t mention how she feels vaguely sick when she thinks about a future where they stay together. She fails to tell him about the butterflies in her stomach when she hears that Jake is coming back.

She’s not sure what she expects, when he gets back. Maybe things will go back to normal, or maybe things never can, but either way, she’s so nervous she thinks she might puke.

He says he didn’t mean what he said, that he told her those things because she was nearby. She’s fifty percent relieved and fifty percent something else, something that feels like disappointment with a sliver of disappointment added in. But at least he is back, and they can be friends again. She thinks that things will be ok, but then Jake retracts his previous statement. He does like her, and he knows he can’t act on it. _Act on it,_ she wants to scream. The feelings which she has no name for return. On her way home, she buys another pack of cigarettes and texts Teddy saying that she isn’t feeling well, that they will have to reschedule dinner. She gives herself one night to dwell on the feelings that she hates so much, and then she forces herself to going back to her usual self; the one who is trying her hardest to love Teddy and to be happy.

iii.

Jake gets a girlfriend, and Amy gets a mountain of new, more annoying, feelings. The worst one of all is the twinge of jealousy which has taken up residence in her chest. The pinch she feels when Jake says the name ‘Sophia’, or when his face lights up when he sees her. Amy wants to dislike Sophia, wants her to be a bad match for Jake, which the rational part of her brain tells her is ridiculous, not least because she is with Teddy, and she’s supposed to be happy for her friend for finding love. But Sophia is nice, and she _is_ a good match for Jake. They’re pretty perfect for each other. Just like everyone seems to think her and Teddy are too. She wonders if they could be happy, if he stopped being so _boring_ (but maybe that’s an inherent part of his personality, like how Jake can’t go five minutes without making her smile) _._

Instead of being jealous of Sophia, Amy grows increasingly jealous of Jake, because he’s happy, he’s found someone he can be happy with, be himself around. That’s all Amy ever wanted, in truth. She doesn’t let herself think about how she could have had that with Jake. They shouldn’t make sense, the two of them, but sometimes late at night, she thinks they might. But it’s too late now, so she stops herself from thinking those thoughts, and puts all of her energy into work and into one last ditch attempt at being with Teddy. She books a weekend away for them upstate, and lets him make her some weird fruit infused pilsners. Amy tries to move on (but the tight feeling in her chest has other ideas).

iv.

A week later, she opens up a word document on her laptop, stares down the intimidating blank page, and tries to come up with words to explain why she has to break up with Teddy. Thing is, just like she had no name for her feelings after Jake’s ‘romantic stylez’ speech, she has no words for why her and Teddy aren’t working out. They just aren’t. The spark is gone, the love is non-existent, she is with him because he’s nice, and safe, and because it’s convenient.

Those aren’t reasons to stay together. She’s been lying about her feelings, so this break up needs to be honest, he deserves that at least.

‘It’s not me, it’s you.’ She begins, and deletes it straight away. She’s not going to include cliché lines, especially not one that is reversed to place the blame on him. Because it’s not Teddy’s fault really- he was just being himself. She knows that there’s an equally boring woman out there for him. Maybe they will meet at some kind of support group for pilsners addicts.

Amy is queen of speeches, and she can usually type one up in record timing, double-spaced and grammatically correct (she pushes the image of a smiling Jake last Thanksgiving: _Santiago style_ ), but this one is hard to write, hard to even begin. Break ups suck, and this one has, if she’s honest, been a long time coming. She makes a bullet-pointed list of reasons they should break up, just to stop the white blank page from taunting her any longer.

  *          We want different things
  *          We don’t have much in common
  *          We’ve grown apart
  *          The spark is gone
  *          It’s just not love.



She stares at the too-short list for white feels like an hour, before slamming her head onto the desk. Would it be so bad if she just upped and left? Just packed her things and left New York? That would solve her Teddy problem, solve her _stupid_ Jake problem. She could start afresh some place new.

But she can’t do that. She has a family to think about. She has a future captaincy to think about. She closes her laptop and resolves to compose the break up speech another day. She has all the time in the world.

Until she doesn’t.

“I invited Teddy!” She thinks it’s a joke for a second. That Jake has somehow found his way onto her laptop and seen the list. That he’s doing this as a _joke_. Peralta speciality. But of course he isn’t joking. He was trying to do something nice for her, and she hates him and herself and Teddy and the confusion making her insides squirm.

She’s always been a terrible actress, and it all goes to hell. How else was it going to go, really?

“I want to break up!” The words lift a heavy weight off of her shoulders, loosen the knot in her chest. But the fallout sucks, she trips over her words, and Teddy sinks her in it.

He tells Jake that Amy liked him back, and her blood runs cold. Teddy has always been a good detective, and she’s cursing the day she told him about Jake’s confession. But Amy’s a good detective too, one of the best around. So why can’t she read Jake’s expression after he hears those words? Is that shock flashing across his face, or confusion? Now is not the time or the place to be wondering if she should have told him earlier. It doesn’t matter anyway, because he’s with Sophia and he’s happy, and now she’s storming away from the table and Amy feels the guilt pinching at her chest. The relief at being done with Teddy wins over at around two a.m., when she has replayed the dinner over in her head at least thirty six times.

v.

Amy knows something is up as soon as she enters the precinct and finds Jake sitting with his eyes closed, rubbing his temples to death. She assumes he is stuck on a case, struggling to connect the dots or to think of any new possible avenues to head down.

“Stuck?” She asks, putting her things down on her own desk, “want some help from the big leagues?” She teases. Jake doesn’t move. “Hey are you ok?” She approaches him, thoughts of loved ones dying flashing through her mind. Jake doesn’t get upset, he makes jokes to cover up his feelings. This is new.

“Sophia and me broke up last night,” he tells her dropping his hands and opening his eyes. His tired eyes.

“What?” Amy is surprised. They were a perfect match, and they seemed happy. Like they could last the long haul. “Are you ok?” She wants to ask what happened, if he wants to talk about it. But break ups suck enough as it is, without having to rehash the gory details all over again the next day.

“Yeah… it’s ok,” Jake shrugs, unable to meet her eye. “I guess we just weren’t meant to be.”

“But you seemed so happy,” Amy can’t help but blurt out, wishing she hadn’t spoken as soon as she did. After she broke up with Teddy, that’s exactly what so many people had said to her. And she hadn’t been happy with him, and no, she didn’t want to tell everyone the reasons why.

“I thought we were.” And that’s the most painful thing about a break up- when you don’t even see it coming.

“I’m sorry, Jake,” is all Amy can think to say next. He nods and smiles sadly at her. He’ll bounce back, because that’s what Jake does, but until he does she will try her best to make him smile, like he has for her so many times.

She squeezes his shoulder as she walks past him and points out some gummy bears he has dropped under his chair.

 

 i.

Amy thinks it’s strange that no matter how rigorously you plan out your life, no matter how organised your five year plan is, life likes to throw curveballs your way when you least suspect it. Sometimes they are bad curveballs, like when you don’t get admitted to your first choice college, but sometimes they are good, like how the universe forced her into being partners with Jake.

They’re not dating exactly, but they’re more than friends. They are something.

She starts going to his apartment sometimes, after he and Sophia break up. A week later and they all go out to the bar as a team, to drown their sorrows with Jake and to celebrate some more good news on the giggle pig front. Jake drinks far too much, which was probably necessary to do.

“Are you ok?” Amy asks him around midnight. She’s driving home, and watching the nine-nine getting drunk and stupid is fun enough without joining in too.

“I’m gonna be ok, Ames. I’m moving on.” Jake slams his glass onto the counter.

“I meant are you ok to get home,” she chuckles, patting him on the back as his head droops forward towards the bar, joining his glass.

She drives him in the end, and it’s completely not her fault when he drags her onto the couch and falls asleep with his legs on her lap. She has no choice but to fall asleep right there too.

The week after, she takes him home from work and stays to help him eat his leftover takeout from the night before.

She leaves her jacket there and goes back the next to pick it up, and from then on out she doesn’t need an excuse to show up on his doorstep.

Sometimes they go for drinks, just the two of them, and they talk about work, and her seven brothers, and his single mom. It’s nice, and it’s comfortable, and it’s the happiest they’ve been in a long time.

 

He asks her out three months post- Sophia, and neither of them is sure if that’s too soon, or if it wasn’t soon enough, but it doesn’t matter. What does matter is the way Amy catches Jake looking at her as they sit on the floor of her living room at eleven p.m. eating Chinese food straight out of the container. What matters is the feeling of happiness that bubbles up in her chest as he squeezes her hand as he pulls her up. What matters is that when he kisses her she knows it’s real without having to wonder.

When her mother asks on the phone, she’ll tell her she is happy without having to mine the emotion from a distant part of her chest. She will tell Jake she loves him a few months later, and it will be the first thing she’s been sure of for a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This is my second attempt at a b99 fic, so I hope you liked it and that it wasn't too ooc. I have a bunch more ideas for these two, but I'm so bogged down by university work atm that I don't have nearly as much time as I would like to write.  
> Anyway, please drop me a comment, constructive criticism is appreciated as always. Find me on tumblr at clonesandgallifrey.


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